YouTube replacing in-video annotations with new Cards format

Google has announced that it will slowly begin replacing annotations in YouTube videos with a new Cards format, which is designed to work on both desktop and mobile platforms.

Google said they heard from YouTube video creators they wanted more flexibility with the information shown during annotations, along with mobile support. The new Cards are the company's solution to those issues. Google says:

You can think of cards like an evolution of annotations. They can inform your viewers about other videos, merch, playlists, websites and more. They look as beautiful as your videos, are available anytime during the video and yes, they finally work on mobile.

Because cards work across mobile and desktop and give you more flexibility to share what you want, our goal is to have these eventually replace annotations. But this will happen only once they can do everything annotations can do today, and more.

You can see an example of Cards in our video above showing off the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge at the 15 second mark. Currently, there are six Cards categories to choose from: Merchandise, Fundraising, Video, Playlist, Associated Website and Fan Funding.

Reader comments

YouTube replacing in-video annotations with new Cards format

Will I finally be able to turn them off forever? I find annotations to be the most annoying nonsense YouTube does. Hey, I know you're watching something moving, or important, but let's distract you with some nonsense that you have to dig in settings to disable, or disable each time. I have plugins in my browsers to keep them away, but can't on my phone for some reason.

"it can be disabled for ever" Wrong. It is a well known and documented problem. If you log out of google or delete your cookies the setting will be re-enabled. Every time. For a second I thought there might have been a new fix from google and gave it a try. Logged into my account, unchecked the box, saved my settings, closed my browser (cookies auto deleted). Opened my browser, logged back in and the box to disable was re-enabled. Nice try though! SMH

They better keep some features of the old system. A lot of videos are designed to work with annotations that pop up in a specific spot at a specific time for a specific duration and are of a specific size. It's a system that works for a lot of people.